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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. Petition to rename the thread: maybe Trump Indictments or The Trump Indictment Destination Thread? There’s a lot of legal trouble to keep track of.
  2. Yea, we all agree that you like to repeat yourself. There’s a disconnect in terms of purpose here though. The goal of a student paper or assignment isn’t to make something that anyone will ever read — I had a real moment of clarity when I defended my dissertation and realized that no one on my committee had read past page one. No one really cares about your great paper you wrote in that one class that one time. The goal of student assignments is to learn something. There’s a presumption of original work when an assignment is given. A student reusing a paper isn’t learning something and certainly isn’t doing original work. The expectations are different than normal work life because the purpose is different. It’s also typical in normal work life to take our hard questions to experts and let them solve it for us. I don’t think anyone honestly would defend a student sending another student to take their exams for them. Different goals carry different expectations. The most common form of self-plagiarism that I see on the appeals committee is where a student is retaking a science lab and uses data from the previous semester.
  3. At least where I teach, nothing automatically triggers. I can’t imagine how that would work without lots of false accusations. TurnItIn comes up with possibly plagiarized passages and possible sources, but context would tell you if it is or isn’t plagiarizism. There are plenty of scenarios where an assignment that triggers lots of flags wouldn’t be plagiarized as well as scenarios where an assignment triggers nothing is obviously plagiarized. My institution doesn’t want us handling these issues off-the-record. If a student plagiarizes, we report it and go through the procedure. We don’t work out arrangements on our own for students to make up for the cheating. There have been situations where a student seemed to perpetually work out ad hoc arrangements and skated by with lots of plagiarism. This way it’s tracked. We have a pretty well-defined policy to determine the punishment — it’s a combination of the severity and frequency. A one off like the violation in the OP would just be a zero on the assignment and some training. I don’t always bother asking the student for their side of the story. If the plagiarism is obvious and unambiguous, I’ll just send them a notice, give a zero, and report it. There’s no point in it, just a chance for them to make up some dumb story and debase themself. I encourage them to use the appeals process if they’re unhappy they got a zero for copy/pasting from Wikipedia. A self-plagiarism case like this would be pretty straightforward, so I’d probably just notify and report. Unless it’s a major assignment or the student is a repeat offender, I wouldn’t expect major ramifications. Self-plagiarism gets covered in our intro to being a college student class as well as first semester English. I suspect most institutions are similar. A returning student after many years would likely fall through the cracks and would be more likely to accidentally commit the offense. Our policy is that ignorance is no excuse, but first offenses on minor violations are mostly teaching moments rather than a chance for punishment. And lulz at a board full of lawyers talking legal options because someone might be punished for violating a clearly defined policy. I’ve served on our appeals committee for a number of years. We’ve had a few lawyer-assisted appeals and it has never helped the student.
  4. I don’t know anything about the law, but it seems like great marketing for the shirts.
  5. Is there a flag for those of us who rigidly adhere to the US Flag Code? Maybe a US flag with black and white stars since we see things in rigid black and white?
  6. From Edward Maunder, The Astronomy of the Bible: Treating the observable universe as a created thing under one God — rather than something that acts irrationally based on the whims of competing gods — is pretty transformative in developing a scientific understanding of the world. You can study the created thing; the competing personalities of various gods doesn’t really allow for that.
  7. Proverbs 27: 15 A nagging wife is like water going drip-drip-drip on a rainy day. 16 How can you keep her quiet? Have you ever tried to stop the wind or ever tried to hold a handful of oil? I know you need to prime the pump, but this religion thread is still in its infancy. It’s all friendly right now; wait until we’ve all decided to hate each other for a few days and then you’ll get that sweet metaphysics talk that you crave. We live in an ordered universe, so this thread must also follow the God-ordained natural order of things.
  8. 1. Read AP, Reuters, and BBC most days. 2. Every few weeks check the cable website headlines to understand what the crazy people in my life are ranting about. 3. Every month or so check the social media of my crazy town acquaintances to see what’s about to filter to the cable sites 4. There are a handful of folks here and elsewhere that I respect as thoughtful people and I’ll read what they link as well. 5. Occasional chats with porta potty girl so I know what’s coming down the pike. 6. Avoid listening to Trump’s demonic voice or even reading his words at all costs — I haven’t heard him speak more than two consecutive words since 1/6. Life is a little bit better.
  9. I missed when CNN got us out of our silo and had the Bin Laden town hall.
  10. That pairs well with field training on how to handle a sucking chest wound.
  11. Sad, yes. Satire? Where’s the exaggeration?
  12. In the military, chaplains fill a vital role for maintaining the spiritual health of young people — of all and no faiths — facing the stress of operating in an absurd and abusive bureaucracy with enemy combatants lurking around every corner. How are schools different?
  13. Here I am trying to read and decipher that Fort Bragg headline and determine whether or not I’m experiencing a suddenly increasing mental impairment or if the writer was impaired. I think I know what it means — I wish I didn’t — but I’m also not sure if that’s what it’s saying.
  14. All of the calculations underestimate the likelihood of a repetitive stress injury on our old man elbows and shoulders. I don’t think I could put up the necessary number of shots every day for long enough to get a lucky streak before my body broke down.
  15. My son’s Who Was Abraham Lincoln book says that Tad was so nicknamed because he looked and moved like a tadpole when he was born.
  16. Bill’s relationship with Monica was by modern definition non-consensual. He also lied about it to cover it up. Take partisan politics out of it and pretend he was the CEO of the world’s largest bomb distributor. We all would agree that an ethical bomb distributor would fire him immediately or we should shop elsewhere. If two decades later, they named his wife their new CEO and named him national spokesman, we’d all laugh at how terrible this company is. Even if Hillary was perfectly ethical and honest, the Bill Clinton stench still looms pretty large. It’s probably not fair to her and she was 100% right about Trump, but such is life and we get the worst kind of leader.
  17. Always good advice:
  18. Kid Rock turning into a clown is one of the more surprising and disappointing developments of this era. He had such promising intellect and musical gifts. Seeing your heroes descend into the absurd is hard to take. Sad!
  19. This whole thing makes me sick to my stomach, but the Sean Feucht thing is trippy for me. I’m one step removed from some of his relatives and have performed right before him on shows. At the time, he seemed like the stereotypical worship musician — a very limited musical knowledge, put on a good enough show, not openly rude but not all that welcoming or friendly (mostly stemming for insecurity for his lack of musicianship), and also REALLY into guns. I never thought I’d see or hear about him again, yet every few months he bubbles up on MAGA circles. I have nothing to add; it’s just weird.
  20. Mole

    LBGTQ

    As a parent of a small and opinionated child, I may have considered this myself at times.
  21. On this Holy Week, where we commemorate the savior of the world and His betrayal and resurrection, we are reminded of the words of Jesus from Mark 6:4: Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”
  22. Also back on point, I don’t carry and haven’t touched a firearm since Uncle Sam stopped asking me; there’s no interest on my part. I don’t hunt or camp and have no internet in visiting neighborhoods where the risks of carrying outweigh the risks of not carrying. I question the assumption that not carrying or not having a firearm in the home is taking on additional risk. There are certainly scenarios where guns come in handy, but also scenarios where even a responsible gun owner acting responsibly makes things more dangerous for everyone involved. The risk calculations are different clearing rooms in Fallujah vs. clearing your plate at the Plano Chuck E Cheese. It’s a bit confusing to me to read gun owners (somewhere on this thread, in the midst of the CR talk) describe scenarios where there turned out to be no threat as some sort of argument in favor of owning. Unless there is actually an intruder, skulking about your house and backyard in your boxers looking for a bad guy gets infinitely more dangerous with a gun vs. a can of wasp spray, an air horn, or just a rapier wit. A gun might make you feel safer, but unless there’s actually a bad guy, it’s way more dangerous. Even if there’s a bad guy, it still might be more dangerous to start a gun fight. The real question — and it depends on the circumstances — is what kind of interactions are more likely to occur. Comparisons to wearing a seatbelt or other basic safety precautions just don’t make sense to me. Wearing a seatbelt imposes minimal risk on the wearer and no risk to those around them. Guns do the opposite. Sometimes the good guy with the gun saves the day, but other times he escalates a situation or isn’t prepared for the stress of gunfire, or the normally responsible gun owner gets complacent and acts irresponsibly, or there’s untreated mental illness and a dark moment turns into inconsolable grief for a family, or the bad guy intruder turns out to be a family member. I’ll grant that there are certainly cases where carrying is the wise, logical choice, but those cases are far fewer than most of us think.
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